TECH Paid propaganda

Harry Craig, Deputy Editor, looks at the Venzuelan government's controlling of public opinion

IN early 2019, Venezuela hit the headlines amidst a major political crisis, in which the National Assembly refused to recognise the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro, instead installing Juan Guaidó as interim President. This fuelled a geopolitical crisis, as western powers, including the United States and European Union, recognised Guaidó’s presidency, whilst Venezuela’s allies including Russia and China continued to recognise Maduro.

The crisis cooled after Guaidó failed in his attempt to overthrow Maduro. However, Venezuela has remained a socialist pariah state for the west. Consequently, Maduro’s government has been engaged in a propaganda war for decades, spanning both traditional and social media. The latter has become increasingly important, and last month BBC Trending revealed that the Venezuelan state was paying social media users to post pro-Maduro propaganda.

On the face of it, this propa ganda is nothing new — Venezue la has consistently produced propaganda espousing the left-wing ideology of former President Hugo Chávez and maintaining the narrative of a continuous fight against west- ern capitalism and imperialism. However, this new, social media-focused style of propaganda exemplifies how sites like Twitter and Facebook have become new ideological battlegrounds.

VENEZUELA HAS CONSISTENTLY PRODUCED PROPAGANDA ESPOUSING LEFT WING IDEOLOGY

According to BBC Trending, multiple private groups on Facebook and Telegram, some with thousands of users, encourage users to share propaganda. This is most commonly done through the sharing of a “hashtag of the day,” formulated by Venezuela’s Ministry of Communications, and so-called “digital troops” are paid to share this hundreds of times a day. This manipulates the trending algorithms of Twitter and other sites to promote pro-Maduro propaganda.

For example, in the wake of accusations against Venezuela’s government that they were using artificial intelligence to spread misinformation, users were encouraged to spread the hashtag #SomosIn- teligenciaSocial (“We Are Social Intelligence”) to counter the fake news allegations. This was highly effective, with the hashtag used more than 360,000 times in 24 hours and trending on Twitter in Venezuela. 90 per cent of interactions with the hashtag were either bot accounts or paid “digital troops”.

In a country where shortages of food, medicine and other essentials are rife, the financial benefit of spreading paid propaganda can be huge for ordinary Venezuelans. One user who spoke to BBC Trend ing earned an extra US$10 a month from tweeting, topping up the US$80 he earns from his job as a security guard and allowing him to purchase small amounts of food or airtime for his mobile phone.

The majority of these propagandists are solely interested in financial gain, and often do not support the government’s actions. The aforementioned user even told the BBC that he does not support the propaganda he tweets, speaking out against Maduro’s government and Venezuela’s low wages.

Of course, propaganda is by no means a new phenomenon. The concern, however, is that the Venezuelan example is part of a